Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT0SS3SWMFA25PE8HGST3Q2

The knock came at half past eleven, sharp and deliberate against the worn wood of Eva's door. Three raps, then silence. Then three more. Rory set down the cup of tea she'd been nursing for the past hour, its contents long since gone cold. Ptolemy lifted his head from his perch atop a stack of leather-bound grimoires, amber eyes tracking her movement across the cramped flat. She stepped over a precarious tower of research notes, dodged the corner of Eva's desk, and pressed her eye to the peephole. Her stomach dropped. Lucien Moreau stood in the narrow hallway, platinum hair catching the flickering light of the single bulb that had been threatening to die for weeks. He wore charcoal, as always, the cut of his suit immaculate despite the late hour and the rain that had been lashing London since sundown. Water beaded on his shoulders, darkening the fabric. His ivory-handled cane hung from the crook of his elbow. She could pretend she wasn't home. The thought crossed her mind, lingered there like a bruise she couldn't stop pressing. But Lucien would know. He always knew. Her fingers found the first deadbolt. Then the second. The third. The door swung open, and there he was. Close enough that she could smell the rain on him, the faint undertone of something darker beneath — smoke and old libraries and that particular scent that clung to anyone who'd spent too long walking between worlds. "Aurora." His voice wrapped around her name like it belonged there, that French accent softening the consonants. "It's Rory." The correction came automatic, a reflex built over months of trying to create distance. "What are you doing here, Lucien?" His mismatched eyes — one amber, one black as a moonless sky — swept over her face with an intensity that made her want to step back. She held her ground. "You weren't at the restaurant today. Yu-Fei said you called in sick." He tilted his head slightly, studying her the way he might study a contract before signing. "You don't look sick." "Maybe I just didn't want to see anyone." "Anyone. Or me specifically?" The question hung between them, heavy with everything that had happened three weeks ago. The warehouse in Southwark. The deal that had gone sideways. The moment when Lucien had stepped between her and something with too many teeth and eyes that burned like dying stars, and she'd realized — truly realized — what he was willing to lose for her. What she might be willing to lose for him. She'd been avoiding the Golden Empress ever since. Avoiding him. "It's late," she said, not answering. "Eva's not here. She's—" "In Edinburgh, consulting on that haunting at the university. I know." Lucien's mouth curved, not quite a smile. "I have my sources." "Of course you do." Ptolemy chose that moment to wind between her ankles, then pad forward to investigate the newcomer. The cat sniffed Lucien's perfectly polished shoes with what could only be described as disdain before retreating back into the chaos of the flat. "May I come in?" Lucien asked. "Or shall we continue this in the hallway where Mrs. Chen can listen from her door?" Rory's gaze flicked to the flat across the hall. The door was closed, but she'd bet anything the elderly woman had her ear pressed against it. She stepped aside. Lucien moved past her, his shoulder nearly brushing hers in the narrow entryway. He navigated Eva's disaster of a living space with surprising grace, stepping over the same obstacles Rory had, finding the one clear spot by the window where the streetlight threw orange shadows across the floor. "Tea?" The offer escaped before she could stop it. Old habits. Her mother had drilled hospitality into her bones. "If you're making some." She wasn't. But she went to the kettle anyway, grateful for something to do with her hands. Behind her, she heard the soft tap of Lucien's cane against the floorboards as he moved, examining Eva's shelves with the casual interest of someone who'd seen far stranger things than dog-eared copies of the Lesser Key of Solomon. "You've been staying here often." It wasn't a question. "My flat's being fumigated." The lie came easily. Too easily. "Is it." The tap of his cane stopped. "Or are you hiding from something?" Rory's hand tightened on the kettle. Water splashed, hissing against the hot surface. She didn't turn around. "I'm not hiding." "Then why won't you look at me?" The words were quiet, but they carried an edge she'd rarely heard from him. Lucien was always controlled, always measured. The consummate broker, never showing more than he intended. This — this rawness — was new. She turned. He stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by Eva's accumulated chaos, and somehow he looked more out of place than she'd ever seen him. Or maybe that was just the way he was looking at her, like she was a puzzle he'd been trying to solve for months and had finally realized might not have an answer. "I almost got you killed," she said. His expression didn't change. "You've almost gotten me killed before. It's practically a tradition." "This was different." "Was it?" "You know it was." She set the kettle down too hard, and Ptolemy startled from his perch, knocking a stack of papers to the floor. Neither of them moved to pick them up. "That thing — whatever it was — it would have torn you apart. And you just... you just stepped in front of me like you didn't care. Like your life didn't matter." "My life matters a great deal to me, actually." Lucien's voice was dry, but something flickered in his amber eye. "I simply calculated that yours mattered more." The words landed like a physical blow. Rory's chest tightened. "You can't do that." "Do what?" "Say things like that. Mean them." She pressed her palm against the counter, steadying herself. "We had an arrangement, Lucien. You provide information, I do the footwork, we both benefit. That's all it was supposed to be." "And is that all it is?" She couldn't answer. Couldn't lie, not about this, not with him watching her with those impossible eyes that saw too much, always saw too much. Lucien took a step toward her. Then another. His cane clicked against the floor, a measured rhythm that matched the hammering of her pulse. "I've been doing this for a very long time, Aurora." He stopped just out of arm's reach, close enough that she had to tilt her chin up to meet his gaze. "Brokering deals. Trading secrets. I've learned to read people. It's how I've survived." "And what do you read in me?" "Terror." The word was soft. "Not of me. Of this. Of what happens if you let yourself want something you're not sure you can have." Her breath caught. The small crescent scar on her left wrist seemed to pulse, a phantom ache from a wound that had healed years ago. She'd gotten that scar climbing a fence to retrieve a neighbor's cat, eight years old and too stubborn to ask for help. Some things never changed. "Evan—" she started. "I'm not him." "I know that." "Do you?" Lucien's hand rose, hesitated, then fell back to his side. "Because you've been running since Southwark. Running from me. And I need to understand if it's because of what I am, or what he was." The demon father. The realm of Avaros. The blood that ran through Lucien's veins, making him something more — and less — than human. She'd known from the beginning, had seen him do things that defied explanation, had watched his black eye swallow light when his control slipped. "It's not that," she said. "It was never that." "Then what?" The kettle began to whistle, a thin shriek that cut through the tension. Neither of them moved to silence it. "He made me feel small," Rory said finally, the words scraped raw from somewhere she didn't like to look. "Evan. He made me feel like I was nothing without him. Like I couldn't survive on my own. And I believed it, for longer than I should have." The kettle screamed. Lucien reached past her and flicked off the burner, his arm brushing hers. He didn't step back. "And you think I would do the same?" "I think—" She swallowed hard. "I think you terrify me for entirely different reasons. I think that what I feel when I'm with you is so much bigger than anything I felt with him that I don't know how to hold it. And I think that if I let myself fall, there won't be anything left of me if it goes wrong." Silence stretched between them, broken only by the distant sound of rain against the windows and Ptolemy's soft purring from somewhere in the shadows. Then Lucien laughed. Low, quiet, with an edge of something that might have been wonder. "You think you're the only one who's afraid?" Her eyes snapped to his face. The mask had cracked, just slightly, and what she saw beneath made her heart stutter. "I've spent thirty-two years keeping people at arm's length," he said. "It's safer that way. Easier. Half-demons don't get happy endings, Aurora. We get used, or we get hunted, or we get very good at walking away before anyone gets close enough to realize what we are." His jaw tightened. "And then you showed up in Yu-Fei's restaurant looking for information about a stolen grimoire, and you didn't flinch when you learned what I was. You argued with me. Challenged me. Made me laugh, which no one has done in years." "Lucien—" "Let me finish." He stepped closer, and this time she felt the warmth radiating from him, felt the subtle wrongness of his presence that had nothing to do with threat and everything to do with the otherworldly blood in his veins. "In Southwark, when that creature came for you, I didn't think. I didn't calculate odds or weigh outcomes. I just moved. And afterwards, when you looked at me like I'd done something unforgivable by surviving, I realized—" He stopped. His hands, usually so steady, trembled slightly at his sides. "What?" she whispered. "What did you realize?" "That I would do it again. Every time. Without hesitation." His mismatched eyes burned into hers. "And that terrifies me more than anything I've faced in either realm." The flat felt too small. The air too thin. Rory's back pressed against the counter, and Lucien stood before her, and the space between them was charged with everything they'd both been too afraid to name. "We're a mess," she said. "Undoubtedly." "This is a terrible idea." "Almost certainly." She reached up and touched his face. His skin was warm beneath her fingers, stubble rough against her palm. He went very still, like a wild creature that had been offered a hand and couldn't quite believe it wasn't a trap. "I'm not good at this," she said. "At trusting. At staying. Eva can tell you — I run. It's what I do." "I know." "I might run again." "I know that too." His hand came up to cover hers, pressing her palm more firmly against his cheek. "But I'm very good at finding people, Aurora Carter. It's what I do." She laughed, the sound startled out of her, too loud in the quiet flat. And then his other hand was at her waist, and she was pulling him closer, and somewhere in the chaos of Eva's flat, surrounded by grimoires and research notes and one judgmental tabby cat, she let herself fall.